Research Activities: A Triad Trajectory, By Sara Khorshidifard

Research activities have entail a triad trajectory in Urban-Rural Interface Studies, Tehran Studies, and Architectural Education, producing scholarship under the three outcome categories of Design Scholarship, Scholarship of Engagement, and Scholarship of Pedagogy.

URBAN-RURAL INTERFACE STUDIES 

Investigation of speculative and/or practical space-shaping concepts within contemporary urban-rural continuums. Integrating ecological, resilient and sustainable practices, I focus on nurturing place and community connections to their contexts to foster, rebuild and revitalize communities. Considering urban, rural and their in-between spaces as unified entities, my research reinforces social, environmental, and economic benefits using design. Each project is unique, with particularized intents, while acute issues facing populations seed individual projects. This area leads to Design Scholarship and Scholarship of Engagement publications. 

TEHRAN STUDIES 

Examination of the decline of civic realms. Drawing on on-site research, I speculatively explore the concept and design of “protean spaces”—democratic social space types for public use. Part of Persian culture is a centuries-old practice of creating ad hoc, unauthorized, and ephemeral gathering places, called patoghs. Drawing on Robert Jay Lifton’s (1993) psychiatric theories of how people in war-torn, fragmented, and hostile societies create mutable self-definitions, which he termed “the protean self,” my studies expand the notion of the patogh into that of a “protean space” where the protean self flourishes. Outcomes fall under Design Scholarship.

ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION 

Exploration of the complexity and multidimensionality of teaching architectural design and design research. Social Responsibility Learning is an under-explored dimension of architectural education. I focus on tactics to make learning integration more successful and establish specific ways of generating tangible measures for intangible outcomes. I combine empirical studies and case-study reflections based on actual teaching experiences to elucidate and build on enhanced pedagogies for more complex learning in design studio. This area of investigation materializes in Design Scholarship and Scholarship of Pedagogy.